RELIGION AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Religion is the belief in and worship of a God or gods and religious dogma is a set of behavioral principles laid down in the Bible, Koran, Vedas, Tripitaka and other texts and interpreted by individuals who claim to have knowledge of how that God, or those Gods, require individuals to behave.[1] Human rights, in the words of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, is a “worldwide secular religion” that has the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) as its “sacred text.”[2] Religion has been with us since the dawn of civilization but, “no ancient religious or secular belief system regarded all individuals as equal.  From Hammurabi’s Code to the New Testament to the Koran, one can identify a common disdain toward indentured servants (or slaves), women, and homosexuals.”[3]  Furthermore, as the singer Holy Near points out, because of the history of the crimes that have been committed in their name, those concerned with human rights have good reason to fear all the major religions.  Nevertheless, as Professor Micheline Ishay notes, “each great religion contains important humanist elements that anticipated our modern conception of human rights”[4] and as Professor Samuel Moyn concludes, “no one interested in where human rights came from can afford to ignore Christianity.””[5]

RELIGION AND THE HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT[6]

“Essential disagreements appear increasingly to pit secular human rights activists against individuals and groups acting from religious motives…on issues such as reproductive rights, gay marriage, the fight against HIV/AIDS, and blasphemy laws, human rights activists and religious groups often find themselves on opposing sides...human rights cannot truly go global unless it goes deeply local, unless it addresses plural philosophies and beliefs that sometimes collide with or appear to resist its appeal to universal norms. If international human rights standards have a claim to universality their relevance must be demonstrated in all contexts, and especially where religion determines state behavior…Human rights defenders should not shirk from insisting on a distinction.”

[1] “As soon as absolute truth is supposed to be contained in the sayings of a certain man, there is a body of experts to interpret his sayings, and these experts infallibly acquire power, since they hold the key to truth.  Like any other privilege caste, they use their power for their own advantage.  They are, however, in one respect worse than any other privileged caste, since it is their business to expound an unchanging truth, revealed once for all in utter perfection, so they become necessarily opponents of all intellectual and moral progress.”  Bertrand Russell, Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?, in Why I Am Not a Christian, edited by Paul Edwards, p. 24.

[2] Michael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry, Princeton University Press, 2001, p. 53.

[3] Micheline Ishay, The Human Rights Reader, Third Edition, Routledge, N.Y., 2023, p.3.

[4] Micheline Ishay, The History of Human Rights: From Ancient Times to the Globalization Era, University of California Press, 2004., p. 5.

[5] Samuel Moyn, Christian Human Rights, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2015, p. 169.

[6] Jean-Paul Marthoz, international media director at Human Rights Watch, and Joseph Saunders, deputy program director.